Slain boy, 16, 'just wanted to get his family out of the hood'

A small memorial was visible Tuesday night at the scene where 16-year-old Keno Glass was fatally shot early Tuesday morning.

Jeremy Gorner, Chicago Tribune

A small memorial was visible Tuesday night at the scene where 16-year-old Keno Glass was fatally shot early Tuesday morning.

A small memorial was visible Tuesday night at the scene where 16-year-old Keno Glass was fatally shot early Tuesday morning. (Jeremy Gorner, Chicago Tribune)

By Jeremy Gorner and Adam SegeTribune reporters

Tuesday morning wasn't the first time that Hector Forastieri had to clean up blood from a sidewalk in Rogers Park.

A maintenance man at an apartment building at Ashland Avenue and Jonquil Terrace, Forastieri this time poured bleach and hot water on the jagged pool of blood where Keno Glass, 16, was killed in a shooting hours earlier as he visited friends.

Glass, an aspiring rapper who went by the name Kay Pee Lashore, was the latest casualty of gun violence in a Far North Side community that has now seen 15 people shot, three fatally, so far this year.

Forastieri, who has worked at the apartment building for about five years, said he has witnessed gunfire while walking down Jonquil, a pocket of the ethnically and racially diverse community that for years has been plagued by gang conflicts and violence.

“I don't want to work over here, but I have to,” said Forastieri, trying to sweep the blood away with a broom along the icy sidewalk left icy by Monday's snowstorm.

Glass, a student at Senn High School who was on spring break, was shot in the head at about 2:40 a.m. Tuesday by one or more occupants of a gray minivan, Chicago police said. He died at the scene.

Charlie Carter was watching TV in his second-floor apartment in the building when he heard four gunshots. He looked out of his window and saw Glass lying on his back on the sidewalk.

“Then I heard somebody else...crying,” Carter said Tuesday in front of the building.

Officers, responding quickly to a call of shots fired, saw a vehicle flee the scene, said police, citing preliminary information. The vehicle crashed nearby and officers apparehended at least one possible suspect on foot, police said.

Police were questioning at least two persons of interest, but no charges had been filed as of Tuesday evening, authorities said.

The shooting happened across the street from the Stephen F. Gale Math and Science Academy and about three blocks from the Howard station on the CTA's Red Line. The motive for the shooting remained unclear, police said.

Glass' brother, Antwan Hubbard, 19, said his brother “had a good heart.”

“He just wanted to get his family out of the hood. He wanted to make a change for everybody. That's why he was rapping,” Hubbard said. “To make a change.”

The neighborhood is statistically one of the safest in the city. But so far this year, 14 people in addition to Glass have been shot, according to a Tribune analysis. Glass was the third fatal shooting victim in the neighborhood so far this year.

The previous homicide came on April 7 when Darnall Gordon, 36, was fatally shot and two others wounded outside a convenience store near Ashland and Howard Street, just a few blocks south of Tuesday's shooting.

Much of the violence in Rogers Park over the last few years has been attributed to feuding between two factions of the Gangster Disciples, according to police sources. But another brother of Glass' denied hs brother belonged to a gang.

Anthony Doss, a supervisor with the anti-violence group CeaseFire Illinois, said flare-ups are bound to happen in the neighborhood.

“It has its moments where violence is its daily agenda,” said Doss, who works with troubled youths in Rogers Park.

Carter, 42, who has lived in the apartment for about two years, continues to be bothered by the gang violence in his neighborhood, violence that he says takes place in the dog days of summer as well as the dead of winter.

“I just don't want to be walking out the door and bullets flying everywhere,” he said.